Review: Sony Sound Forge 9

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Sony Creative Software’s Sound Forge 9 is a professional production quality digital audio editor ideal for audio and video production projects. With Sound Forge 9 you can create, edit, restore, and master audio. Sound Forge’s strength’s include an extensive editing and mastering effect tools suite and graphical editing tools. Like Sony Vegas (see our review), Sound Forge 9 is a rock solid performer and can be used to edit a video’s audio for use with Vegas as well as export audio to CD Architect.

Out of the box Sound Forge 9 installs smoothly and includes installation discs, QuickStart manuals, and keyboard command cards. Using the Sound Forge 9 workspace I was able to work on multiple audio clips at the same time which is a real time saver for cutting, pasting, and mixing audio. Also, at the bottom right corner of the workspace is a snapshot of key attributes of your audio files (sampling rate, bit depth, mode, and time).

The file open command is especially handy as you can click on a file and preview the clip prior to opening the file. Sound Forge 9 can open audio and video file formats, has plenty of presets for NTSC, PAL, HDV, and HD and supports formats including AAC, AIF, CDA, MP3, WVA, AVI, MOV, MP1, MP2, MP4, SWF, WMA, and WMV. Each of the formats has many quality presets to pick from (i.e. MP3 has range of 16Kbps to 320Kbps bit rate). For new projects I was able to set the sampling rate (max 192KHz), bit depth (max 64-bit), and number of channels. Surround sound options include 2.1, 5.1, and 7.1.

For videos Sound Forge 9 shows the video frames above the audio. I was able to use the video preview window to monitor the video as the audio played. Sound Forge 9 also supports previewing video on an external monitor.

Precise real time editing is the name of the game for Sound Forge 9 and clips can be mono, 2-channel and quad stereo, and surround sound (2.1, 5.1, and 7.1).

The keyboard commands are a breeze as pressing “v” displays the volume envelope and pressing “p” displays the panning envelope when working on a clip. It’s very easy to shape sound envelopes and preview the sound and by tweaking the volume or sweeping and panning quickly you can create a wide variety of sounds including:

“Process->Reverse” lets you flip (invert) audio data and can be very useful in manipulating waveforms (i.e. changing a crescendo into a diminuendo).

“Process->Time Stretch” changes the audio length without affecting the pitch. Entering 150% for example, increases the length of a clip by half its size.

To record, first ARM a channel for recording and press RECORD. Sound Forge 9 can support up to 32 mono tracks (16 stereo) and there are 25 cross fade curves, providing plenty of granularity control.

Sound Forge 9 can convert and clean analog recordings (i.e. tape, vinyl) to digital audio. Noise reduction 2.0 includes noise reduction, click & crackle removal, clipped peak restoration, and audio restoration effects. All of the effects have plenty of presets. For example, there is a preset for 78 RPM for cleaning vinyl records of clicks and background hiss.

To extract audio from CDs I used “File->Extract Audio from CD”. Here you can extract specific tracks, all tracks, or based on time range. Clicking on the MusicID button retrieves CD textual information using the Gracenote Media Recognition Service. Information including title, artist, and album are retrieved. Tracks can also be previewed prior to extracting and a Refresh button is handy when swapping CDs.

Editing and Master Effects

Sound Forge 9 includes over 40 real time effects that can be previewed in real-time using the Process, Effects, and FX menus. The FX menu includes favorites and you can also add your own effects using the Plug-In Manager as well as customize and organize entries in the Favorites folder. Once I was satisfied with previewing an effect I applied it by selecting the “Process Selection” check box which also re-generates the waveform. I also used the Bypass check box to compare the unprocessed signal with the wet signal.

With the EQ effect you can adjust frequency, gain, Q, and parametric bands. Graphic EQ bands range from 20 to 20KHz and you can set high and low pass filters with parametric EQ.

There are a number of channel conversion options: down mixing multiple channels to single channels (i.e. 5.1 and 7.1 surround to stereo channels), sending a percentage to center, right and left (i.e. 100% of channel to center or 50% to right and 50% to left), and dragging and dropping between channels. Noise reduction 2.0 plug-ins include noise reduction, click & crackle removal, clipped peak restoration, and audio restoration.

Included with Sound Forge 9 are an iZotope mastering effects bundle of four effects including Mastering EQ, Mastering Limiter, Mastering Reverb, and Mastering Compressor. To select an iZotope mastering effect I used the “FX Favorites->Mastering Effects Bundle” option.

Tools

Some interesting tools include Detect Clipping and Batch Converter. “Tools->Detect Clipping” checks an audio clip and inserts markers where clipping is occurring. This is a very slick feature and one that I used a lot. With Batch Converter I applied multiple effects to a range of files. Also, when I invoked Batch Converter all of my open audio clips were automatically added to the queue for processing; pretty cool feature.

Sound Forge 9 also has a spectrum analysis tool that shows frequency over time and is useful for revealing which audio frequencies are most prevalent.

Sound Forge 9 uses the “track-at-once method” and can burn audio tracks to a CD, add more tracks, and then close the CD as separate actions. I used “Tools->Burn Track-at-Once Audio CD” and also tested prior to actually burning the CD. Sound Forge 9 can also export audio tracks directly to CD Architect for burning Red Book audio CDs using “File->Export to CD Architect”. CD Architect is launched automatically and loads the audio clip.

Sound Forge 9 can also generate MIDI time-code and has hardware meters to control the output gain of attached audio interfaces/devices.

Scripts provide a powerful way to automate repetitive tasks. Scripts are invoked using “Tools->Scripting->Run Script” and selecting a script such as “Add Markers”. You can also create your own scripts in C#, Jscript, or VBScript using “View->Script Editor”. There you edit-compile-run. For more information on scripting and access to sample scripts check out Sony’s Sound Forge 9 Script Developers Kit.

Extras

Directly from Sound Forge 9 I accessed web media using “File->Get Media from the Web”. This launches Internet Explorer displaying the Sony Creative Software web site with royalty free music and effects from content providers including Artbeats, Sony Media Software, Shockwavesound.com, ActionBacks, Sounddogs.com, and iamusic.com. Some of these developers have demo clips available for free download.

Sound Forge 9 can also link directly to Sony Music Studios Internet Mastering (SIM) Services where users can upload their audio files for fee-based Sony Music mastering. You may want to consider this option for one of your very special projects. To access use “Help->Sony Music Studios Internet Mastering”.

Always Room for Improvement

In a future version of Sound Forge 9 I’d like to see more integration with Vegas and Cinescore. As was the case with Vegas, in addition to the QuickStart manuals I’d like to see hard copies of the PDF user manuals included in the boxed set.

Performance

Sound Forge 9 combines a high quality fully featured high performance audio editor with a powerful real time editing and mastering effects library, which is ideal for audio/video producers.